Young families short of cash could not afford the house where The Good Life was filmed in the 1970s.
Photograph: Michael Stephens/PA

An MPs’ inquiry says that older people should be offered more support to “downsize”, thus releasing larger homes for families. This would include linking older people with services that could help them declutter, pack, clean and so on. Between a third and a quarter of older people were interested in downsizing, but often left it too late.

In response, the Commons communities and local government committee called for an accreditation scheme to support would-be downsizers. Oh, and there may be a bit of advice and support going for older people (energy saving, repairs) who wish to stay in their homes. What a relief. For a moment there, I thought that government policy had become shuffled up with an early draft of the film script for Logan’s Run: The Estate Agent’s Cut.

There’s a housing crisis, in particular, a crisis of affordable housing, and there’s an ageing demographic. However, let’s be careful that older people in their (sinister music) “larger homes” don’t become too much of a focus, when the housing crisis is really caused by government policy and must be solved by it.

Part of this solution could be helping older people who are committed to downsizing. However, it’s unfair to imply that elderly people choosing to stay in their homes are even mildly responsible for younger, poorer people struggling to be housed. Nor is it right to apply none too subtle societal pressure that in effect amounts to regarding older people as bed-blockers in their own homes.

Moving house is stressful at any age, but, with all the talk of help, there’s nothing mentioned about, say, lifting or cutting stamp duty for these late-life moves. (Instead, it’s about older people being directed to services they can pay for.) There’s also the issue (if we’re focusing on privately owned homes) of how much freeing up larger homes is going to help people who are short of money and struggling to get on the housing ladder.

As for where older people end up, there’s been talk of plans for large-scale sheltered accommodation new-builds. This might ensure that certain political parties don’t lose that all-important silver vote, but what if it also leads to nothing else being built, such as… erm, affordable housing for younger, poorer people?

Let’s not fall prey to the politics of division. Older people who choose to remain in their homes should not be held even partly responsible for anybody else not having one. If people have these larger homes, it’s probably because they’ve built their whole lives around them. For them, staying put could be an emotional pull, whatever the apparent impracticalities of staying there.

Granted, this inquiry was about people who wanted to downsize, and, sometimes, people have to move out anyway, because of ill health, but there are wider issues in play here. Certainly, older people should never feel pressured about being “selfish” or find themselves sweet-talked into downsizing if they don’t really want to. One person’s “clutter” is another person’s life.